Spycatcher. The Thatcher government spent millions in a futile attempt to prevent former MI5 officer Peter Wright from publishing his memoirs. Wright's most sensational claim was that there had been a mole at the heart of MI5 for many years, and that the mole was the director-general himself, Roger Hollis. An entertaining read, he writes of his early years in counter-espionage: "For five years we bugged and burgled our way across London at the state's behest, while pompous bowler-hatted civil servants in Whitehall pretended to look the other way."

Storm command: a personal account of the Gulf war. General Sir Peter de la Billiere, the commander of British troops in the Gulf war, wrote about SAS operations during the 1991 conflict. The book chronicles the war from the allied nerve centre, analyses America's execution of the air and land campaigns and tells how de la Billiere persuaded the US to deploy the SAS in the western desert of Iraq.

Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNab. Another book that did not meet with official approval, this gave an account of McNab's experiences with the SAS, starting as a young soldier in the struggle against the IRA in the streets and fields of South Armagh. McNab went on to command SAS patrols behind enemy lines in Iraq during the Gulf war. The book contains details about the world of surveillance and intelligence-gathering, counter-terrorism and hostage rescue.

Decent Interval. The CIA hated Frank Snepp's classic expose on the collapse of South Vietnam in which he accused the agency of abandoning its agents when the US left Saigon. The CIA sued Snepp because it had not given him clearance to write about his experiences. The resulting court case went all the way to the Supreme Court. Snepp tried to defend himself on first amendment grounds with the help of a then-unknown Harvard lawyer named Alan Dershowitz. He ultimately lost the case, plus his money and the right to publish anything about the CIA without first receiving authorisation. He got his own back, to a certain extent, with Irreparable Harm - which did receive CIA clearance. The book tells of his legal fight and casts light on the nature of bureaucracies and how they defend their turf.